


Diplomatic Relations

by Rubynye



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold
Genre: Flying Sex, Multi, Nonmonogamy, Quaddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ivan settles in on Union Station.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diplomatic Relations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/gifts).



> This was written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/3_ships/profile)[**3_ships**](http://community.livejournal.com/3_ships/). If anything in this cracky little tale is good, it's to the credit of [](http://dsudis.livejournal.com/profile)[**dsudis**](http://dsudis.livejournal.com/) and [](http://quietann.livejournal.com/profile)[**quietann**](http://quietann.livejournal.com/), who gave me lots of resources.

Title: Diplomatic Relations   
Recipient: Misura   
Fandom: Vorkosiganverse   
Characters: Ivan Vorpatril/OFC/OFC   
One requested story element: conscious consent (to wit: Ivan saying 'yes' in full awareness of what he's doing and saying, rather than being swept away by the moment or the momentum) Spoilers through _Diplomatic Immunity_

Drifting up to the viewport, Ivan thinks about how easily he's gotten used to his life as the Barrayaran diplomatic officer on Union Station. He'd expected the opposite; when he was given the assignment he'd cursed in as many languages as he could remember while racking his brain to figure out whom he'd pissed off badly enough to lob him halfway across the Nexus. Most Barrayarans would have considered the place infested by 'muties', and Miles himself hadn't sounded fond of Quaddiespace. Impressed by it, but not fond.

Considering Miles, it probably had less to do with his nearly dying there -- where hasn't he?-- and more to do with the compact build of most Quaddies, their lower pair of sturdy arms instead of long straight legs. After all, Miles does have that thing for women of some altitude. Ivan smirks at his reflection in the vaccumproof glassine polymer, shifting his face to a smile as Claire 52 appears behind him; she pushes off the wall, spinning over to him like a dancer, her short red hair flaring around her head. In freefall where they belong, where there isn't really any 'up' or 'down', Quaddies don't look short to Ivan. They look just right.

Claire feel just right as she lands, smiling over Ivan's shoulder, gentle hands on his arms and around his waist. Her breasts pressed to his back are the same as on any girl, nicer and rounder than some, but occasionally when he's dozing her four hands make him momentarily picture two women petting him in tandem.

Or three, or four. Claire kisses his ear as she murmurs, "There you are. Soraya woke up and asked where our big Barrayaran was."

Ivan laughs, patting her hands in quick succession. "Just looking at the sky," he says, refocusing his eyes on the distant stars beyond the light-spangled steel curve of the station's flank.

Claire squeezes him a little. "Are you getting homesick for planetside? We could--"

Some things are the same about women everywhere. "I'm fine as long as I'm with my lovely girls," Ivan says, because he knows Claire loves to hear it, grinning at her as she slips warmly around to his front until she kisses him. Soraya would laugh herself silly if he tried a line like that on her, but Claire's sweet and young and delightfully susceptible to such blandishments.

Soraya is a little older and nearly cynical enough for an ImpSec staffer, or a Vorrutyer. The first time Ivan saw her she'd reminded him of the now transmuted Donna; she'd sailed in late to his installation reception, her puffed jacket brilliant red, all twenty fingernails glossily painted to match, and her footlong braid of silky black hair waving behind her, much longer than the Quaddie standard.

Remembering that first vision, Ivan bounces through Soraya's main room, caroming off the furniture, Claire giggling on his shoulder. When he arrives at the bedroom, Soraya drawls, " Hi, Soldier," from the depths of her crimson sleep sack.

At least he didn't collide with the entryway this time. "Hi, Sealer," he replies, heading for her smile.

The same smile had gleamed as she swept across the room, making that odd starfishing motion into something graceful; she'd sailed through the gaggle of dignitaries like a yacht through dinghies, introduced herself as Junior Sealer Soraya One and invited him to dinner then and there. He'd accepted, curious and intrigued, not least by her low-necked jacket and the salutatory effects of zero-G on well-endowed women, but without any idea what dinner conversation one made with a Quaddie lady.

His end of the conversation turned out to mostly consist of "yes" and "please" and "more" and "I think I'm spinning," and eventually, "I really am spinning," hers mostly of grins and growls, moans and laughter. It wasn't until he returned to his quarters in the gravity section, until his boots thumped to the floor, that Ivan thought about what it probably means when a woman throws herself on the new diplomat in town, smacked himself in the face until it hurt, and got on the comconsole to Lieutenant Corbeau and ImpSec.

Corbeau just smiled and said, "Soraya's a very useful contact in the governmental offices." ImpSec had nothing substantiative on her in their files. Three days later, when Ivan answered his chime to find her sitting in her bright red float-chair, Soraya said, "I'm not a spy," by way of greeting and kissed him for follow-up, tipping out of the chair into his arms.

What set off Ivan's internal klaxons was their absence; what made him suspicious was that he believed her. He breathed cool filtered-station air and dragged himself away from Soraya's lush warm mouth, pushed her back by her shoulders and held her there long enough to ask, "Why should I believe that?"

"Because you work for Barrayaran Imperial Security," she said brightly, her lower arms strong around his waist. Her upper hands, wrapped around his wrists, were callused in odd, excitingly dangerous patterns. "If you want to, you can find out more about me than I know about myself."

"I doubt that," Ivan replied, and only belatedly added, "What? I'm a diplomat--"

Soraya laughed at him, squeezing his wrists and his ribs. "And I'm a Sealer," she said cheerfully. "We're well matched. Invite me in, Ivan." So he did.

Now, tucked into her sleepsack, Soraya climbs Ivan, up his leg and side to press her cheek to his opposite shoulder, reaching across him for Claire. Ivan watches them kiss with healthy warm-blooded appreciation and remembers first reading about Claire, when the full ImpSec extract from Lt. Corbeau's archives arrived. Soraya's "known associate," Claire 52, graduate student in biology at Union Station University, red curls, golden skin, bright friendly blue eyes. Ivan almost hated the pretty little thing for proving him right in his doubts about Soraya.

At least until the next time he saw Soraya and she asked, "So, have you read up on my partner Claire yet?" as the girl herself grinned over Soraya's shoulder. Claire turned out to be even prettier in person, even friendlier than she'd looked, and a hip-waggling dance performed by a cheerful young woman was seductive even 'upside down' in zero-G. By the time Ivan made it home that night he was yawning and pleasantly sore, but he sucked down some coffee and sent a couple of worms into the Union Station databases before he let himself fall over.

Ivan still remembers, even through the heat spilling through him from Claire's lips on the apple of his throat, how badly he slept that night. The bed felt wrong, flat and open instead of wrapped around him; the gravity felt wrong, the way he sank into the bed and weighed himself down. He woke up gasping as if his own body were too heavy to fully expand his lungs, the roar in his ears only slowly subsiding enough to let his console's beeping penetrate, and nearly fell when he staggered dizzily out of bed. Eventually he managed to grab the readouts, information from the Quaddies' computers filtered through his own copies of some ImpSec analysis programs; as he skimmed them all he could think about was Soraya's tilted smile and laughing dark eyes, Claire's soft curls and the ways she giggled and wiggled. When Ivan found himself wondering what Miles might be able to advise him, or rather found himself considering asking Miles for advice, he knew he'd gone entirely around the bend.

"Mmm," Claire hums over Ivan's chin. "Are you two sleepy?"

"Not at all." Soraya takes Claire's upper and lower hands with hers, and they look expectantly up at Ivan.

Pressing his hands to the matching curves of their lower backs, sleek and soft-skinned and enticingly feminine, he nods encouragingly. "Carry on, my ladies." Claire reaches for Soraya with three hands, hanging onto Ivan's shoulder with the fourth, a lovely connection as he watches his girls necking in earnest.

Ah, Claire, far less demure than she looked. She actually bobbed up at his office that morning, satchel in hand like a schoolgirl, to invite him out for a bulb of hot drink and a little chat. "So, what are your intentions towards Soraya?" she asked him, and he nearly treated her to a zero-G shower of tea shot through his nose.

Then he had to consider the question, while Claire waited, her smile patient and knowing and disturbingly like Soraya's. "Just think about it," she said while he was still staring at her. "Think about us." She kissed his cheek lightly, flitting past him, and whisked away into the passing traffic stream.

When Ivan returned to the consular office, Lt. Corbeau paused in packing his desk to look at him with a comradely sort of curiosity. Corbeau wasn't Miles, which was a good thing, and he was entirely besotted with the Quaddies in general and his dancer in specific, so Ivan took a deep breath, waved vaguely in no specified direction, and asked, "Am I risking causing a diplomatic incident?"

Corbeau thought this over a moment and shook his head. "The Quaddies respect Downsiders who seem to have a personal investment here," he replied, and Ivan could see his point.

So he bought some flowers and brushed his uniform, and actually succeeded in making Soraya's eyes widen with delighted surprise when she opened her door to find him there.

Soraya recovered quickly, of course, as Claire sailed in behind her, grin bright and cheerful. . "So, what did you find?" she asked as she handed the flowers off to Claire.

"Claire has three parents, you know five styles of weaponless combat, and both of you are utterly lovely. If you're a spy you've hidden it very well," he reported, and she laughed. "And if you're not, why do you want me?"

"Because," Soraya said, setting her hands either side of Ivan's head, "I like your face." Claire sidled up behind him, winding her arms around his neck and his waist. Ivan reflected that he ought to be keeping an eye on the exits, ought to worry about being throttled or suborned. Instead he reached back as he reached forward, one arm around each pretty lady.

"I'm only here for two years," he said, thinking of his mother's smile as Claire's cheek lay soft against his and Soraya's eyes shone up at him. "I'm not leaving Barrayar for good."

"We're Quaddies," Soraya said, nodding seriously. "We need to stay here."

"So. While I'm here." Ivan tightened his arms a little, as eight warm sleek arms tightened around him. "I'd like to stay with you two."

"Mmm, yes," Claire murmured, kissing a path from his ear downwards, and Soraya's smile gleamed until Claire reached his mouth with hers and his eyes drifted shut.

Now Soraya smiles just like that, her eyes sparkling just like that as she gently bumps Ivan's nose with hers. "You're thinking," she purrs, as soft hands stroke him all over and Claire giggles against his collarbone.

"Just trying to figure out how to summarize this in my report," he replies, and Claire huffs delicate indignity as she squeezes him.

"We'll have to give you something to make the flimsies catch fire," Soraya says decisively. And so they do.


End file.
